My life used to keep time with the tick-tock of clocks wound by other people. I cannot say that it ran in sync with those clocks; there was almost always an edge of dissonance, a tension that made it clear that something was not quite right. But it was not always that way, and it is not that way now.
Before I reached school age, my awareness of time and the turning of the year was based primarily on the objects and needs present in my daily life. Without effort or thought, I could immerse myself so completely in any given moment or experience that nothing else existed for me in that time: eating a bowl of warm oatmeal with milk and sugar, lying next to a patch of buttercups and thinking about the glow they make when held under a chin, the clicking of a rock tumbled onto a hopscotch board, the scent of autumn leaves raked into a pile, the scene set by snow falling on the willows at the end of the yard across the street. I gave little, if any, thought about how long something took or what was next. Every moment in every season was timeless and complete unto itself.
Borage [S. Barker]
Then I started kindergarten, and my involuntary enrollment in the totally human construct of time was underway. By the time I was halfway through 1st grade, I had developed a fear of being late to school, which eventually morphed into a fear of being late to anything. And oh! how I hated having an established bedtime, especially when it meant going to bed while it was still light outside.
I clearly remember the first angry, tear-filled night I argued with my mother over the indignity and egregious wrongness of being expected to go to sleep before the stars were in their places in the sky. Indeed, something was wrong with the clock if it thought it was bedtime while the sun was still up. It did not seem right to me then, and now that I know what I know about magic, it does not seem right to me now.
I wish I had already encountered the poetry of Robert Louis Stevenson at that point in my life; his poem entitled “Bed in Summer” might have made me feel not so alone. Had I been able to deploy his words in my defense, I doubt they would have swayed my mother’s sense of reason, although she most certainly would have liked this poem.
In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer, quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.
I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people’s feet
Still going past me in the street.
And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?
My life stayed tangled in the timeline of the educational system for years after that, at first due to my own education and then when my oldest child started kindergarten. By then, workplace timekeeping and extended family expectations were also well established in my life—all those clocks and never enough time.
As I aged, I learned that weekends or summer breaks suspended the workings of some clocks, and I continued to find moments such as those I encountered in my pre-school days. During those happenings, I slipped away from the limitations of human time by falling so deeply into an event or moment that nothing else mattered. I was still a young child when I began to recognize those happenings as magic and the concept of walking in other worlds began to take root in my mind.
In these days of my life, when I am no longer a child but still connected to child-me, I look forward to this slipping away and can walk between the worlds at will.
Sometimes this occurs when I am dreaming. Sometimes it is linked to specific people or rituals and meditations. Sometimes it is connected to places: certain Adirondack lakes, a riverside park in the Hudson Valley, cemeteries, quiet ocean beaches, and some special coves, valleys, and ridgelines of the Appalachian Mountains. It frequently occurs in my own home or in my own gardens.
In the last few years, I have mostly freed myself from the obligation to those clocks wound by other people and from the human construct of time. Except for the occasional meeting or appointment, time measured by minutes and hours has extraordinarily little meaning to me anymore.
The stronger my connection to my land becomes, the deeper I move into my spiritual practice. As my spiritual practice deepens, I become less and less attached to clock time and more attuned to the natural rhythms and cycles of the turning of the wheel of the year. And more in tune with each season and the micro-cycles that can happen within any given day.
Calendula [S. Barker]
I do not spend my entire life in a state of zenned-out bliss, but I do make an effort to spend as much time as possible fully living each moment. Because I live a magical life, that includes time spent without time and time spent between worlds.
As recently as this past Spring, I was still trying to schedule and micro-manage my daily activities, setting alarms on my phone to divide my day. I worked in the gardens from 8-10 a.m., then came in for breakfast and to process the morning harvest. If I had to start laundry or do other domestic chores, I did so between 10 and 11 a.m., and was seated at my desk and writing by 11. I stretched my legs or napped as I needed.
I was miserable. As with the bedtime while it was still light outside situation, this rigid scheduling did not feel right to me. My spirit rebelled against it, as it has done for all my life. Now that I have fully embraced letting go of time, it will never seem right to me again.
Most days I wake up before the sun rises, easing out of the worlds that fill my dreams and moving into this here and now. I dress in comfortable clothes, ponytail my hair, and stick my feet in my wellies before heading outside, basket in hand, to tend to the chickens and the gardens.
Mid-summer brings hot, humid days to this mountain river valley, and it is not uncommon for me to open the door to a morning world where the fog is hanging so low and heavy that the trees at the edge of the yard are nothing but shadow figures. As I look into the mist this morning, I am reminded of the weather lore that claims that there will be a snowfall in winter for each morning fog in August.
In many an August past, I said I would keep track of fog days and snowfalls. Last year I completed that task. On the first morning in August, I taped an index card to my desk. I created two columns: August Fog and Winter Snow. I made a tick mark to record each foggy morning; there were 22 in all. Then on December 22, I began tracking snow days. The lore missed the mark: there were only 9 snow falls over the winter. But in the August heat, every morning that I paid attention to the fog I was also traveling into a cooler day ahead.
This year I started a notebook to keep track of the fog and snow lore and I plan to do it for the rest of my life. It is an engaging, fun, entirely subjective, non-scientific experiment based on my deciding what qualifies as fog or snowfall on the small plot of land on which I live. Beyond that, this exercise allows me to travel from the hottest days of summer to the coldest days of winter with the stroke of a pen.
Being present in the moment while being aware of what is to come and what has been allows for living in the here and now while simultaneously walking in liminal space. This is a gift that I treasure.
On this morning, like many others, I fill the chicken waterers, throw down some scratch, and sit for a while to observe the birds. The flock is small, so it is easy to be familiar with the behavior of each bird which is a necessary part of maintaining their health and well-being. I also take joy in seeing them go about their chicken business and listening to them talk to each other and fuss at me.
I bid goodbye to the girls when I am ready and walk through the south yard to the medicinal herbal garden out front. The fog shifts for a moment, revealing the mountain ridge to the south. Low-lying clouds shroud its peaks, and the sky beyond is composed of shards of Carolina blue. In the blink of an eye, the fog shifts again. The mountains vanish, and the mist enveloped garden is once again my entire world.
Taking a deep breath to center myself, I look down at the flowering herbs. Chamomile, St. John’s wort, borage, calendula, yarrow, and mugwort grow in the southeastern part of my land. Even dimmed by fog, the varying shades of yellow and green, orange, silver, white, and purple create a beautiful quilt top across the raised bed garden.
I do not carry my phone with me to this part of the garden. There will be no external world distraction as I settle into the harvest work. I am seated next to the chamomile, and I lower my face to the tiny blooms to inhale their sweet, calming scent. The smell always tugs at some childhood memory, but I can never quite pin it down. Maybe the candy stick in a fun dip package? Closing my eyes, I focus on my breath and that scent, pulling it through my body. I open my eyes when I am ready, with no thought to whatever time may have passed. In this moment, all that matters is what I am doing here and now.
Eyes and fingers follow the green stems to the yellow and white heads of the delicate flowers; then, I use the garden snips to remove each tiny head. Leaving a portion of the blooms for the pollinators, I gather half a handful, then drop them into a jar in my basket. I do this over and over again, and it becomes a working meditation. I pause to remove a bug or trim away a dying stem, then move back into the work. Harvesting, sharing, and clearing out are the dominant themes. Breathe in. Breathe out. The sun is higher in the sky behind me, but the garden is still wrapped in a light mist with bits of morning color, pollinator noise, and birdsong all around.
The rumble of thunder sounds in the distant west. Should I head into the house to beat the rain? I start to gather the snips, knife, and harvest jars to put them back into my mother’s dark brown basket. She purchased it decades ago from one of those at-home parties. She filled it with a spray of purple flowers and kept it next to a shelf filled with precious knick-knacks. I know it made her smile. Would she smile now to know that I use her basket every day? I close my eyes and call up her image here among the mist and flowers.
What little effort it takes to move between those two worlds – my mother’s and mine. The simple basket at my feet becomes a magical object because of the memories associated with it. I smile, remembering my mother’s smile and her love of her garden. I decide to stay and keep working, regardless of the rain. Breathe in. Breathe out.
Once again, I trace a green line back to the head of a flower. Yes, this one can go. No, this one must stay. Snip. Snip. Trace another green line. I have dropped more than a cup and a half of chamomile blooms into the jar. I pause to talk to the robin and the wren, and in the pause, move on to the St. John’s wort. A different shade of green, a warmer tone of yellow, but the motions are the same. There are fewer than two dozen of these blooms, and after I drop them into another jar, I sit down to work on the borage.
The silver color of this plant comes from the prickly hairs that grow on its leaves and stalks. I shift my work pattern, as I will not run my fingers along the heavy lines of the borage plant. I seek out the magenta and purple-blue star-shaped flowers with my eyes, then use the snips to harvest them. Again, I gather half a handful at a time, then drop them into a jar. And again, I leave a portion of the harvest for the pollinators who are already buzzing all around me. I have harvested almost one cup of these beautiful flowers. Breathe in. Breathe out.
I hear a familiar caw and pause to seek out the form of crow high in the tall white pine. He certainly has a great deal to say this morning, and I always try to listen when he speaks. Crow is another linking point between the worlds; I began walking the Crow Road before my youngest daughter died. It seems I always will be now that I am aware of its existence.
Chamomile [S. Barker]
I had thought this road would end. At first, I hoped that my daughter would recover from her mental illness and addiction struggles, and the road would disappear. After she died, I thought I would reach some destination point as I worked my way through the grief and trauma. But this is the road I am on now, even while I am living a vibrant life. Not one foot there and one here, but moving back and forth and between, sometimes in dreams, sometimes in memory, sometimes in reality, sitting in my garden. Crow has added layer upon layer of depth to my understanding of walking between the worlds and being in liminal space.
He caws once more, then flies away.
I cry until the heartache pours itself into the healing garden, and I have no tears left.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
The rain has decided to pass on by, and the sun has burned the fog away. I stand up to work on the orange and yellow calendula flowers, deadheading the blooms that have gotten past me and harvesting the good ones. As I work, I do the same with my memories of my daughter, deadheading what has gotten past me and gathering the good ones.
Half a dozen bees are buzzing around these flowers, drawn by the spicy-sweet scent that fills the air around me. I speak to the bees, reassuring them that I will leave their share. After all, we are in this garden work together.
My fingers are sticky from the resin in the green bracts of the plants. I drop each deadhead where it is and place the other flowers in a bowl; these blooms are too big to put in a jar. Calendulas are prolific bloomers, and when I am done gathering flowers, the bowl is nearly full. I am satisfied with the morning’s harvest, and the internal timekeepers that matter are starting to make noise, telling me that my body needs water and food.
The sun has journeyed across the sky and is now shining on my face. The fog is gone until tomorrow, and the day is bright around me. I decide to sit on the garden bench, just to be outside a while longer. I can tell by the sun’s position that mid-day is approaching, and for the purpose of this column decide to check the clock when I go inside.
I stay until I have seen a hummingbird eat from the big stand of bee balm, then fly over to the calendula. I walk around to the back of the house, picking and eating a sun gold cherry tomato on my way. I am ready to be inside now. Ready to eat and drink and talk with my partner.
When I take my basket into the kitchen, I check the clock on the stove. I was outside with the chickens and in the garden for more than four hours. There is no sense of dissonance. No tension.
This day is what it is. I am content.
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